God, I hope I ain’t repeating myself with these stories but at this age now, it’s a real threat and I have caught myself doing it. Anyways, some silly memories and moments from so long ago.
*****
For 25 years, no one, our parents, Ken nor his doctors knew he had cystic fibrosis, That was odd because being born in 1959 with it meant certain death by the age of 5. It wasn’t till he joined the Navy that a ship’s doctor became suspicious of his coughing. Naval doctors are highly attune to any sickness on board because any disease can spread through a cramped ship and render it useless if the crew is incapacitated.
One of the benefits of having full blown cystic fibrosis (which my brother did have which threw the doctors for a loop because they couldn’t’ explain why he lived as long as he did) is that your spit is thicker than normal. So, as a kid and teen, my brother could win any spitting contest vs. any other boy in our neighborhood. With his heavier that usual spit, he could launch well aimed missiles of goop higher and further than anyone else. It could land on the sidewalk with an audible splat. I can too by the way and I might speak more on having only ONE copy of the transmutase CF gene later.
He told me a story when he was fifth teen, he and Sue Ann, the girlfriend of a guy he knew, were standing on opposite sides of a large transformer that was in the back of a small shopping mall near where we lived. We all hung out behind that place as kids and teens. My brother and the girl could not see one another due to the transformer being between them it was no matter as they did not like each other well enough to even speak.
So to wile away the time before his friend Tom showed up, he decided to launch a glob of spit straight up into the air. He fired it and he told me it traced a perfect parabolic arch up and over the transformer. He then heard a shocking high-pitched scream from the other side. Sue Ann then comes running around to confront my brother.
“You DIRTY Son of aa BITCH! You BASTARD! I’m getting my boyfriend to KICK your ASS! NO one spits on ME!”
He tells me he started to bust out laughing. Not because he wanted this to happen, but just the sheer luck of hitting her in the first place. When you’re fifth teen, these things are funny.
In telling the story, he said he never did think it was a big crime to have spit on Sue Ann, apparently her boyfriend didn’t either as he never made good on Sue Ann’s desire for revenge.
*****
Waking up on a Saturday morning after us guys spent the night hitting the Providence night clubs was always a struggle. I never drank much but even so, I could never avoid the hangover that always came the next morning.
One morning in autumn I had gotten up and then promptly sat on the couch, feeling like crap with a dry mouth and wondering why I keep doing this. It wasn’t three minutes after 7 AM when my Mom appears to bitch about the leaves in the backyard she wanted raked up.
“Are you going to rake up those leaves? You SAID you were going to do it today!” she gripes. I can’t imagine why she’s so annoyed so early in the morning but if she was in one of her moods (and there were a lot of them) she could be real fun to deal with.
“Look, I just got up...I’ll get to the yard eventually.” I tell her.
She leaves in a huff and I sit there, nursing my tiredness and think, “Great, I’m feeling like crap and she’s just piling on...it’s way too early in the day for this.”
After 20 minutes I go to the kitchen to drink a gallon of OJ to relive my thirst when I spot my Mom through the window, out in the backyard, raking the leaves. It dawn on me what is happening.
I go outside and say, “Hey, I TOLD you I will get to this...go back inside!”
She ignores me and I see this for just what it is. Since I didn’t leap off the couch immediately to do the raking, she flew outside to “do it herself” to make it look like I was never going to in the first and to give herself a “reason” to be bitchy and unload whatever misery she had onto me.
“Hey, I will DO it!" I tell here again.
She’s not looking at me and grumbles to herself, “I have to do EVERYTHING around here” and continues furiously raking up the leaves.
Now I’m staring to get pissed and the hangover isn’t helping.
“OK...OK..fine! Look, You LIKE raking leaves HUH? You LOVE it? Get in my car now! I’ll take you to the woods in the Slater Park and YOU CAN RAKE ALL THE LEAVES YOU WANT!”
In the next door neighbor’s back yard, I hear Terry start laughing loudly as he had heard the entire conversation and my quip.
I go back into the house, sit on the couch and drink my OJ.
*****
I knew a German family over by Teknor Apex’s chemical plant not too far from here. Dad and Mom had emigrated from Argentina and prior to that from Europe. I began to wonder if the Dad was of WW2 age and was one of the Nazi’s who fled to that nation as they were a bit too friendly with ex-Nazis. Argentina had at one time hid the executive officer of Auschwitz, Eichman. There was also Dr. Mengele and many of those other fun loving guys who survived the war and fled with the help of either faked or real UN refugee passports.
I knew the youngest boy in the family, Paul. He was the only one in the family with an English name but the family pronounced it as “Powell.” Paul’s sibling names were Liesl, Anton, Bruno, Klaus and Gerhard. The oldest brother had a seven year old daughter named Krystal and the whole family had a nickname for her, "Krystal Meth." I have no idea where they came up with that one. They were all Americanized beyond belief and you wouldn’t know they were from overseas at all. They had no accents and they loved McD’s. I once made the mistake of thinking out loud to Paul how hot his sister Liesl was. I was like that, blurting out what I was thinking at times. Whoops…well, she was damned pretty.
On a hot July Sunday afternoon, Jim, Paul and I were hanging out on his front steps with that wonderful polyvinylchloride smell from Texnor Apex hanging in the air. His brother Klaus then came outside to ask Paul to “move his stuff from the dryer” as he wanted to use it because he needed his work clothes ready for the morning.
“Yeah, sure..yeah, in a bit” says Paul
“No man, I need it now, I have a ton of stuff to dry.” says Klaus.
Paul retorts that he’ll do it...later.
That pissed off Klaus who switched to German and yells.
"Hol deine Scheiße aus dem Trockner!" (Get your shit out of the dryer!)
"Später! Hör auf mich zu nerven!" (Later! Stop bugging me!) shoots back Paul.
Klaus is red in the face now and shouts, "Gottverdammt! Ich werfe deine Kleidung auf die Straße, wenn du sie nicht wegräumst!" (God dammi! I’ll throw your clothes into the street!)_
Now, I’m watching and hearing this and I start to feel some fear. Why? I have seen soo many WW2 movies as a kid and the most German I have ever heard was from mean, nasty and angry SS officers screamning at Jews, Ameican POWs or whoever as they tried to conquor the world.
It really does sound like that in real life that and it amazed me. I had an actual reaction hearing it.
Next, of course, the brothers start swinging punches at one another and continue to shout in German. This brings out the Haus Frau, their mom, who is built like a overstuffed sausage in a in old fashioned dress more akin to European fashion than American. She herself starts barking in German at her two sons. She had finally said something that got the two of them to stop immediately. She then looks at Jim and I and says something else in German. By the look on her face when she said it, it probably was an insult. She was one of those loud mouth, bragging working class Moms who was quite fine swearing like a sailor in front of anyone, including us at times. She also looked like she could pull a plow on a farm because she was tough, low down and beastly.
Later after all that, Paul, Jim and I are walking to Vet’s bar on Central Ave to see if they’re illegaly open to get some beers on a Sunday.
I say to Paul, “Hey, I know some German…’Fick mich, du miserabler hurensohn.” I say.
“Do you KNOW what you just said?” Paul asks.
“Not really,” I tell him, “it’s from a Frank Zappa song.”
Paul translates...”You just said, ‘Fuck me you miserable son of a bitch.”
Again with my stupid mouth trying to act all smart at 18.
We continue walking when Paul asks, “Hey...did you ever see a real Walther PPK? An antique one? My Dad has one!”
A Walther PPK was the standard side arm issued to SS officers during the war back then. I really began to wonder just what that family’s back story really was after hearing that. But I never pressed the issue. Years later, I come to find out his Dad was just a conscripted Waffen soldier in the last years of the war, fleeing the Russian Army as they smashed the German war machine. Thousands of German soldiers deserted and made their own way home. His Dad instead took off for Slovenia and then to Argentina and then next door to Teknor in Pawtucket, towing his Frau and six kids with him.
